Champagne producer charged with looting historical sites

A well-off winegrower from eastern France is standing trial for looting archaeological sites after amassing a huge collection of Roman coins and artefacts

Meaux, France, where the champagne producer was taken to courtPhoto: Alamy

By David Chazan, Paris

5:26PM BST 30 Jul 2014

A champagne producer has gone on trial accused of looting hundreds of historic French locations to indulge his lifelong passion for archaeology.

Police found a collection of about 2,300 trouvailles - or lucky finds - worth nearly 100,000 euros (£79,131), when they searched his home. Their suspicions were aroused when they stopped his car for a routine check and found 112 Gallo-Roman coins in the vehicle.

The silver-haired winemaker, 60, whose name has not been released, told a court in Meaux that he had started digging up ancient Roman coins as a young boy with his grandfather.

"I wanted to be an archaeologist but I wasn't able to do it," he said, explaining that he had left school without higher academic qualifications.

Equipped with a metal detector, he said he had devoted his spare time for more than three decades to scouring sites without realising they were protected by law.

"I thought it was legal. I'm not a highway robber," he said, adding that he had a "passion" for Gallic history and artefacts.

The judge then asked if he had read "The Gallic Wars", Julius Caesar's firsthand account of his campaign in Gaul. "No," the defendant replied, to which the judge said: "That's a pity. It's fascinating."

Prosecutors have asked the court to fine him 197,000 euros, with a four-month suspended prison sentence if he is convicted. They called for his wife, who is charged with handling stolen goods, to be fined 5,000 euros.

Amateur diggers and looters pose a major threat to France's historic sites, according to archaeologists. A quarter of a million objects are reported to be unearthed illegally every year in the country.

Marc Drouet, deputy director of archaeology at the Ministry of Culture, who took the stand as an expert witness, said: "Uncontrolled digs are a real problem. It's a catastrophe for science." He added: "When you visit Versailles, you don't take away a stone from the chateau."

The winemaker said he had made a will leaving "a large part" of his collection to a local museum and had kept everything he found so that "people from here see what our ancestors left in the fields".

Jean-David Desforges, the head of a society for the protection of historical sites, claimed that some treasure hunters come from Britain to "pillage" France.

"A lot of English people come over with metal detectors and scour the First and Second World War battlegrounds in the north of France," he said.